Oak in secondary... stuff floating...Pellicle?

sooo I just checked out this arrogant bastard clone I made. Its a 1.072 beer with 72IBU all chinook. 18 days ago I put in 2oz oak cubes in cheese cloth bag and dropped it in the keg. I had soaked the cubes in roughly 4oz of whiskey for three weeks and dropped them in. Sooo I tasted it out today and the stuff is unbelievably good. I gotta make another batch of this **** ASAP. So I went to yank the cubes and first they sank so I had to fish them out with a racking cane. Next time I guess I need to put a piece of string through the gasket or something. So then I cracked open the keg and it looked like a very thin pellicle was trying to form or something. The layer was very very thin, white... here's a photo after I fished out the oak. It doesn't look like mold. It looks just like little tiny chunks of **** floating.



Do you think thats sap/residue from the cubes or something? I suppose it could be brett, but the beer isn't sour and there was no O2 in there for it to take off. Lol.. not like I could taste it anyways with how bitter and delicious it is.

Anyways, either ways i'm going to drink this **** up like a champ. It tastes so damn good!!! I guess next time around boil the oak and dump in 4oz of bourbon straight up.

It looks like something is growing. It might take a really long time for it to do any damage in the cold of the kegger though so drink up. If it is brett, pedio, lacto or any other bug, it wouldn't sour it for a long time. Heck, it took at least 4 months to even start souring our Flanders and that's with a 5 gallon brett starter.

illl bring some to the meeting next week for you guys to try...lol... if you guys can handle a flemish sour pellicle on top you can handle this on top!! It gets sucked out of the bottom of the keg anyways...

sirsloop said:

illl bring some to the meeting next week for you guys to try...lol... if you guys can handle a flemish sour pellicle on top you can handle this on top!! It gets sucked out of the bottom of the keg anyways...

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Interesting. Tap a keg of Arrogant Bastard....finish with a Lambic. Its like a twisted version of a Black and Tan.

Serious question though. Did you sanitize your cheese cloth bag? That could be your source.

-Todd

Just a word of advice, if it does end up infected: next time, you need to do more than soak your chips in booze to sanitize them. I've heard that you need something like 180-proof alcohol to do the job. It's better to just boil some water, put the oak chips/cubes in a jar, and pour the boiling water on top of them. It won't actually boil the oak, but it flash-sanitizes them and immediately starts to cool down from 210º. Leave it like that for 15 minutes or until it's cooled enough, then dump it all in.

Evan! said:

Just a word of advice, if it does end up infected: next time, you need to do more than soak your chips in booze to sanitize them. I've heard that you need something like 180-proof alcohol to do the job. It's better to just boil some water, put the oak chips/cubes in a jar, and pour the boiling water on top of them. It won't actually boil the oak, but it flash-sanitizes them and immediately starts to cool down from 210º. Leave it like that for 15 minutes or until it's cooled enough, then dump it all in.

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I have steamed mine in bourbon/water mix.

Yeah, I suppose the cheesecloth could be the culprit. I usually don't dump crap in the beer after its beer so I forgot to do that. IDK... either way the keg is on tap right now and i'm gonna drink it up. Arrogant is best young... I can't wait until its fully carbed up! Its just gonna be a little MORE arrogant! HAHA... its infected and you can't even taste it, beotch! HAH!!

Sooo... next time flash boil the oak AND cloth, then dump it in with bourbon.

I would recommend just chucking your oak in there without the cheesecloth. When your beer gets to the oakiness that you want just transfer the beer to another keg with a jumper

Crap, I just oaked a BW that I thought was sanitized in bourbon alone. Double crap.